Wilkie, who was sworn in as the tenth Secretary of VA in July 2018, has spent much of his first year visiting VA campuses.

"My emphasis is on rural and Native American, the two groups in our country who serve in the military in the greatest numbers," said Wilkie.

"We're in 2019, we're 243 years into this experiment, and the leadership in Washington still doesn't understand the scale of the American West or it's uniqueness," he added.

Wilkie says he wanted to visit Cheyenne "to talk to them about how they consistently perform so well."

"It's wonderful being in Cheyenne because it's a place where I don't have to explain military service to anybody," said Wilkie.

"You can't find a more welcoming place than this VA medical center, than the vets center, than the benefits office," he added. "Consistently high ratings, customer satisfaction rates are through the roof."​